Chinese authorities slaughtered over 20,000 birds at a poultry market in Shanghai on Friday as the death toll from a new strain of bird flu mounted to six, spreading concern overseas and sparking a sell-off in airline shares in Europe and Hong Kong.

The local government in Shanghai said the Huhuai market for live birds had been shut down and 20,536 birds had been culled after authorities detected the H7N9 virus from samples of pigeons in the market. Other live poultry markets in the city will be closed down from Saturday, it said.

All the 14 reported infections from the H7N9 bird flu strain have been in eastern China and at least four of the dead are in Shanghai, a city of 23 million people and the showpiece of China's vibrant economy.

Syrian rebels said they overran an army garrison that defends the main southern border crossing with Jordan on Friday and vowed to press on to take control of the major transit route.

Fighters from the Free Syrian Army said they captured the Um al-Mayathen post on the main Damascus-Jordan highway in heavy fighting overnight that ended a siege that lasted more than a week. Dozens died in the clashes they said.

"It (the garrison) is a major defense and now we will lay siege to the border crossing and cut their (the Damascus government's) supply lines," Abu Omar, commander of the Lions of the Sunna Brigade, told Reuters by phone.

Late last year we reported on the development of a completely new kind of breakwater to prevent a tsunami from hitting the coast with its full might. Unlike other breakwaters that would otherwise hinder sea transportation and the aesthetics of the ocean, these remain at the ocean floor until called upon.

If a tsunami warning is in effect then they can rise up in a matter of minutes and disrupt the coming wave. On 28 March the first nine-meter segment of this system was constructed and successfully tested.

With the urgency of the financial crisis, Günter Verheugen, former Vice President of the European Commission voiced the need for further European integration, in a video interview with EurActiv.

Speaking in the margin of a EurActiv's workshop on the 'Future of Europe,' Verheugen stressed the importance of fostering deeper EU integration, adding it is the only way the EU can “cope with the challenges of the future”.

"We are in a changing global environment and I have to say that only a stronger and bigger Europe can cope with the challenges of the future," he stressed, adding policymakers should galvanise support for 'widening' the Union to include strategic partners, like Tukey.

Despite the lack of support in our societies, European integration must continue,” Verheugen said.

An exit from the eurozone may look tempting for Cyprus in the throes of economic collapse but it is a high-risk option for an island economy heavily reliant on imports, analysts say.

The Institute of International Finance, which represents the world's largest banks, said it would be "much easier" for the small EU state to bounce back through a devaluation, something which is not an option in the eurozone.

Paul Krugman, an American laureate of the Nobel Prize for economics, says "Cyprus should leave the euro, now" on his blog.

"Leaving the euro, and letting the new currency fall sharply, would greatly accelerate" rebuilding by allowing agricultural exports and the key tourism sector to be more competitive, he writes.

Over just a few days, he has unilaterally nullified the 1953 armistice with South Korea; vowed to restart his uranium enriching and plutonium programs; and issued "final approval" for "merciless" nuclear strikes against the United States.

He taunted South Korea's new leader, and shut down the Kaesong industrial estate, which served as unusual example of cooperation between the two Koreas. Most recently, he transported a missile to the east coast — either in an attempt to lob a warhead in America's general direction (he lacks the capability to actually hit the continent), or more probably, to test it, perhaps on the April 15 birthday of deceased founding father Kim Il Sung. "Is there a more bizarre and frightening figure in the world today than North Korea's young, impetuous and untested leader?" writes GlobalPost senior foreign affairs columnist Nicholas Burns.

For its part, the Obama administration helped amp up the belligerance, flying nuclear-capable B-52s and F-22 stealth bombers over the peninsula in late March, and sailing destroyers to the region in an apparent attempt to remind Kim Jong Un that he's messing with a bad-ass super power.

Experts from around the world are in daily talks about the threat posed by a deadly new strain of bird flu in China, including discussions on if and when to start making a vaccine.

Any decision to mass-produce vaccines against H7N9 flu will not be taken lightly, since it will mean sacrificing production of seasonal shots. And scientists warn it will take months to get any finished bird flu vaccine to the market.

Chinese authorities slaughtered over 20,000 birds on Friday at a poultry market in the financial hub Shanghai as the death toll from a new strain of bird flu mounted to six, spreading concern overseas and sparking a sell-off on Hong Kong's share market.

State news agency Xinhua said the Huhuai market for live birds in Shanghai had been shut down and birds were being culled after authorities detected the H7N9 virus from samples of pigeons in the market.

All the 14 reported infections from the H7N9 bird flu strain have been in eastern China and at least four of the dead are in Shanghai, a city of 23 million people and the showpiece of China's vibrant economy.

The Obama administration, which has made military moves intended to signal to North Korea and U.S. allies that it takes Pyongyang's threats seriously, plans to switch gears and tone down public pronouncements about joint military exercises with Seoul, U.S. officials said Thursday.

The U.S. messaging, which has included flying two B-2 stealth bombers over the Korean peninsula and the announcement of new or expanded missile defence systems in Alaska and Guam, was intended to reassure South Korea and Japan it would back them in a crisis, the officials said.

But it also appears to have prompted even greater threats and bellicose rhetoric from North Korea.

Sunni Muslim-ruled Gulf Arab states are often wary of subversion from their powerful Shi'ite neighbor Iran, but Dubai's veteran police chief reserves most of his wrath for the "dictators" of the Muslim Brotherhood.

Dhahi Khalfan's suspicions focus mostly on the Egyptian branch of the Sunni Islamist organization, propelled to power in the most populous Arab country in elections since the overthrow of President Hosni Mubarak in a popular uprising in 2011.

"The Brotherhood as a ruling party in Egypt has no right to interfere with other countries. They are no longer a political party and should respect the independence of other countries," Khalfan told Reuters in an interview this week.

Millions of internal records have leaked from Britain's offshore financial industry, exposing for the first time the identities of thousands of holders of anonymous wealth from around the world, from presidents to plutocrats, the daughter of a notorious dictator and a British millionaire accused of concealing assets from his ex-wife.

The leak of 2m emails and other documents, mainly from the offshore haven of the British Virgin Islands (BVI), has the potential to cause a seismic shock worldwide to the booming offshore trade, with a former chief economist at McKinsey estimating that wealthy individuals may have as much as $32tn (£21tn) stashed in overseas havens.

In France, Jean-Jacques Augier, President François Hollande's campaign co-treasurer and close friend, has been forced to publicly identify his Chinese business partner. It emerges as Hollande is mired in financial scandal because his former budget minister concealed a Swiss bank account for 20 years and repeatedly lied about it.

In Mongolia, the country's former finance minister and deputy speaker of its parliament says he may have to resign from politics as a result of this investigation.

In a testament to just how deep tensions are running, Buddhist fishermen and Muslim asylum seekers who fled Myanmar hoping for a better life brawled with rocks and knives on Friday at an immigration detention centre in Indonesia, leaving eight dead and another 15 injured, police said.

The deadly melee broke out in North Sumatra province, where more than 100 Rohingya migrants most intercepted off Indonesia’s coast in rickety boats and 11 illegal fishermen from Myanmar were being held together, said local police chief Endro Kiswanto.

Insults were quickly traded, and the cleric was allegedly stabbed by a fisherman, said Yusuf Umardani, detention centre chief. When the cleric screamed, his friends jumped in to help. From there, a burst of fighting broke out so quickly, security guards were too late to stop it.

The European Central Bank will monitor euro zone inflation carefully over the next 18 months, ECB Executive Board member Benoit Coeure said on Friday as it threatened to sink further below a 2 percent target.

Euro zone inflation slipped in March for a third straight month to an annual rate of 1.7 percent, versus the ECB's goal of close to, but not above, 2 percent. ECB chief Mario Draghi said this week the bank stood ready to act to boost the stalled economy.

North Korea has placed two of its intermediate range missiles on mobile launchers and hidden them on the east coast of the country, South Korea's Yonhap news agency reported on Friday, citing intelligence sources in South Korea.

The report could not be confirmed, but may be intended to demonstrate a threat by the North to either Japan or to U.S. bases on Guam. The North has threatened to attack bases on Guam if the United States launches a strike on it.

"Early this week, the North has moved two Musudan missiles on the train and placed them on mobile launchers," Yonhap cited a senior military official familiar with the matter as saying.

A sixth person has died of H7N9 bird flu in China, state media said on Friday, after authorities slaughtered poultry in a mass cull at a Shanghai market where the virus has been detected.

The latest fatality was a 64-year-old farmer who died in Huzhou, in the eastern province of Zhejiang, local officials said according to the state Xinhua news agency.

He is thought to be among 14 previously confirmed human cases of H7N9, and is the second person from Zhejiang to die from the strain, with the other four fatalities in Shanghai, China's commercial hub.

North Korea has now moved two missiles to its east coast, loading them on mobile launchers, South Korea's Yonhap news agency said.

The agency cited a top government official.

"It has been confirmed that North Korea, early this week, transported two Musudan mid-range missiles by train to the east coast and loaded them on vehicles equipped with launch pads," Yonhap quoted the official as saying.

Seoul said earlier it had been seeking urgent information on the first Korean missile that had been moved to the east coast.

The Pentagon has pledged to switch gears and tone down public pronouncements about joint military exercises with Seoul, U.S. officials said on Thursday. The Obama administration, which has made military moves intended to signal to North Korea and U.S. allies that it takes Pyongyang's threats seriously, plans to switch gears and tone down public pronouncements about joint military exercises with Seoul, U.S. officials said on Thursday.

The white working classes are so alienated from society that they should attend citizenship ceremonies with immigrants, according to David Cameron’s poverty tsar.

Frank Field said some working class people were increasingly unsure of their identities.
He suggested that going to the ‘wonderful’ citizenship ceremonies could help them feel like they were part of British society again.

Amid reports that Syria has turned the main destination of the world's Jihadists, Damascus warned that unless those Jihadists are denied access, the crisis it has sustained for over two years will spill over across its border and set the entire region ablaze.

Syria, via its state-controlled newspaper al-Thawra, warned Jordan on Thursday against training foreign fighters on its territory and accused it of espousing the policy of a double ambiguity.

Al-Thawra said Jordan is now "closely feeling the meaning of drowning into anarchy, which even does not need a matchstick to ignite in all directions." It added that Jordan is getting closer to the "volcanic crater."

The report came just two days after the Washington Post said the United States is currently training some 3,000 rebels in Jordan to send them later to Syria "to escalate the crisis."

Authorities in Shanghai on Thursday closed a live poultry trading zone in an agricultural products market and began slaughtering all birds there after detecting H7N9 bird flu virus from samples of pigeon from the market.

Meanwhile, a person who had close contact with a dead H7N9 bird flu patient in Shanghai has been under treatment in quarantine after developing symptoms of fever, running nose and throat itching, the Shanghai Municipal Health and Family Planning Commission said late Thursday.

China's Ministry of Agriculture said Thursday it found the H7N9 virus from pigeon samples collected at the Huhuai wholesale agricultural products market in Songjiang district of Shanghai.